Chapter 32
Maeneb picked her way across the swampy ground with distaste. It had dried out somewhat since she had been here late last year, but in many places the mud still sucked audibly at Shoba’s hooves. The fragile flowers that adorned the yellowed grass had been trampled by thousands of rope-bound soles: for stonemen’s trails covered the land, showing the direction of their marches over the previous days or weeks. All the trails led northwest, towards the foothills of the Liath Mountains. Only the peaks themselves, now clear of cloud and luminous with snow, looked untouched – indeed, untouchable.
Much else had been touched and worse. The tall trees that had stood here before winter, and for centuries before that, were now gone: large areas of pine and selver had been chopped down, evidently to refurbish the Outland Forts – although the nearest of those Forts, which had been inhabited over the winter, now stood cold and empty but for piles of rubbish. It was far to the west that the stonemen were now assembled.
So west was where the companies were riding. Maeneb, despite her relish of quiet places, found she did not like this despoiled and dismal landscape. The warmth of the guard-house last night already seemed a distant memory. Durba’s comments didn’t help her mood.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Durba called to Maeneb now, as they cantered across the wilderness in the midst of Parthenal’s company of Riders. Maeneb did not bother to reply. She sensed that Durba was still happy. It was most disturbing, because nobody else was – although she felt a kind of fierce excitement in Parthenal, riding at the head of the line.
She had been pleased to be allocated to Parthenal’s company instead of Thoronal’s. Both men were once again named Captains; the other Captains included Rothir, Sashel, Uld and Ikelder – a young man who had apparently impressed Huldarion during the previous brief engagements up here. Sashel’s bluff twin, Gordal, was in Parthenal’s company, as second in command. She could not tell how much he minded. All twelve Captains were under the ultimate command of Huldarion himself.
Apart from Veron. He had a roving role with his group of hand-picked men, and chose his own route. His company had ridden off before dawn, to track the movements of the second stoneman army – the one which had attacked the Melmet forces. It was reported to be marching across the northlands on its way to support the stonemen already stationed in the western Forts. Huldarion was anxious to get there first and join battle, if possible, before the reinforcements could arrive.
The Kelvhans, on the other hand, seemed anxious to move fast and get the fighting out of the way simply so that they could go home to their comfortable houses and civilisation. The Kelvhan troops had looked askance at her, as an unseemly and no doubt inept female soldier; but probably for the same reason, had assumed that she would not understand them when they talked in their own language. From what she overheard, the Kelvhan troops seemed to think they faced an easy task. Maeneb hoped their confidence was justified.
“This is fast!” yelled Durba alongside her. “We’re leaving Melmet behind!”
Maeneb looked across at the Kelvhan troops. They were indeed riding fast; slowly outstripping the Vonn, although their horses rattled with weapons and the men were weighed down by their armour – whether chain-mail or the flashier plate armour worn by the High Prince and his lords. But their horses were big, strong beasts. Durba was right; behind them, the smaller steeds and weary men of Melmet were having trouble keeping up.
Somewhere back there was Yaret. It had been an unexpected pleasure to see her whole – or almost whole – and well. Maeneb felt a mild affection for her, as a practical and efficient person who did not try to touch her nor talk about emotions. However, Maeneb had sensed some deep disturbance in Yaret: some dark and churning region in her mind that had not been there previously. Something had certainly happened.
They had been riding for three hours now and had passed a further two forts – both empty – but the next fort, as they approached, was clearly not. Smoke rose from it and from its surroundings of dark swelling hills, which were blurred by trees and threaded here and there by thin black waterfalls. The glistening mountains stood aloof and lofty over all. The Riders halted.
Between them and the hills, the ground seethed with movement, like the writhing of ants around a rotten corpse. Thousands of stonemen. They were preparing for battle: for there was a line marching in from the forts still further west. Although most of the stonemen were on foot, there was at least one company of cavalry; that was unusual.
And behind them, she thought she could discern some carts. She reached out with her mind. While the darkburns, as ever, could not be felt, she could detect their presence – their many presences – by the clumps of fear in the stonemen round them. Despite their drugs the stonemen were not totally immune to the darkburn aura.
Apart from fear, though, what was there? Stonemen’s minds seemed to be mostly cloud and shadow. Sometimes, like now, there was aggression, rage: yet all oddly unshaped. Formless. And at other times there would be merely blankness, a space waiting to be filled. Although she wondered about the drugs that they were fed, it did not incline her to feel pity for the stonemen. But then Maeneb knew that pity was something she was short of in general.
Huldarion, at the head of the Vonn, held up his arm to sign for caution and a slower pace. As they rode on they spread out more widely, each company to its allocated role, so that by the time the halt was again called on a drier stretch of ground they were already in formation. They stayed mounted, bows at the ready and swords to hand.
No trenches had been dug. There had been no time to send teams of man ahead: and even if it could have been done, Huldarion was doubtful of their efficacy. Instead each soldier carried at least two stones wrested from the heads of corpses, in the hope that this protection would prove good enough against the darkburns.
Apparently the Kelvhans did the same. Some of the Kelvhans also carried nets of fine metal wire with which they hoped to trap the darkburns: an untried device. For her part, although she now could see the smoking carts distinctly, Maeneb hoped they would stay closed. With any luck the darkburns would not be used at all.
She was to be disappointed. Durba, next to her, said, “Who’s supposed to start?” at the same time as she realised that the stonemen had already started.
Only a few of them had begun to move: their horsemen, who were riding out in scattered pairs. But then the cages on the carts clanged open, the sound arriving at her ears a second or two after she had seen it.
The pairs of horsemen were driving darkburns. She saw the smoking blurs in the spaces between the riding stonemen, yet she could not tell how they were doing it until she realised that there was a long chain stretched between each pair of riders. Clever, she thought: the horses aren’t close enough to the darkburns to make them bolt, and they move fast…
Very fast. The chains had perhaps been treated in the same way as the stones, or had stones bound into their links, for the darkburns ran from them. As fast as horse could gallop, they raced, blurred and smoking, towards the waiting Vonn.
“Dismount, and shoot at the riders!” cried Huldarion. “Then ready with your swords!”
The horses were guided to the rear while Maeneb got to work with bow and arrow. It seemed only half a minute later when the darkburns rushed on them; she slung her bow over her shoulder and unsheathed her sword. With the chains close behind, the darkburns did not veer aside, but ran straight into the waiting ranks of Riders. Maeneb hoped they would rush through swiftly to escape the stones; but meanwhile the effect was much the same as every other encounter with darkburns that she had suffered.
Once again she was enveloped by that smell, felt that disabling terror, saw that familiar scrambling mayhem as people hacked desperately at the smouldering shapes and then turned to run before they began to burn. Maeneb helped Felba and Gordal to smash one darkburn to pieces, each of them leaping back at intervals. The stonemen who had not been shot from their horses were riding around at a short distance with their chains, although they did not join in the fight.
Smoke and steam obscured her vision. Yet she was aware that through the smoke on either side of her, Parthenal, Rigal and the others were doing much the same as she was: slash, run, slash, run. As she saw Parthenal shatter one darkburn and turn instantly to face another, she realised why the darkburns had not broken through the ranks of Vonn to flee the stones. Their keepers, in their pairs, were riding right around each group of fighting Vonn and enclosing them with lengths of chain.
She and five other Riders found themselves trapped in a chain circle with a darkburn. She shot at both stonemen in rapid succession until they slumped heavily from their horses; but the damage was already done. The darkburn could not escape – and neither could Gordal, on whom it leapt.
It seemed to wrap him in a shroud of smoke. He fell beneath it, screaming.
Pain filled Maeneb’s head. The burning. It was unbearable. It paralysed her. But after a few seconds it faded, and she was able to join Parthenal and Rigal as they smote and slashed at the darkburn that embraced the fallen man.
They took it in turns, knowing all the time that it was too late. Long before the darkburn had been hacked to pieces, charred fragments of it scattered all around, it had done its work.
At least the pain had not lasted long, she told herself. Gordal had been conscious for no more than a dozen seconds. Now the body blazed up in a roar of orange flame and a billow of black smoke. Parthenal staggered backwards, coughing, and trying to disentangle himself from the chain that was draped across the ground.
“We should use this,” said Maeneb. She wrenched one end of the chain from the wrist of a dead horseman. “Give me a hand,” she called to Durba, who was staring at the blazing corpse of Gordal with her mouth open. “I said give me a hand!”
Durba held out a hand automatically and Maeneb tossed the end of the chain at her.
“Coil it up,” she ordered, as she unwound the chain from Parthenal’s feet and hunted for its other end.
“Stonemen,” wheezed Parthenal, half-choked with smoke, but pointing with his sword. A new line of stonemen was galloping towards them, with no darkburns this time – but with speed, their axes raised.
“Stonemen!” she yelled at Durba, who seemed half asleep. “Wake up! Hold that chain tight! Raise it up!”
She lifted her own end of the chain. Rigal, understanding what she meant, seized the other end from Durba’s passive hands and pulled it tight.
The first horsemen rode straight into it. Although the chain immediately flew out of Maeneb’s grasp, it had already made the stonemen’s horses stumble. One threw its rider and careered into another. Parthenal and Landel made short work of two more stonemen as they tried in vain to control their floundering steeds.
Maeneb parried a blow that was meant for Durba, and swiped two-handed with her sword at the stoneman who had struck it as he rode past. When he fell from his saddle she finished him off with a stab through the ribs. Then she had to pull her sword free and immediately spin round to face the next attacker.
“Get the chain!” yelled Parthenal. She grasped it, and the two of them tried the same trick again, pulling the chain high and tight – with a similar result. Although the chain was whipped out of her hand on impact, it was again enough to unbalance the enemy horses, while their riders were not skilful enough to keep them upright. Then everything was a confusion of flying axes and sweeping blades. Maeneb reverted to her long knife, her preferred weapon at close quarters; for it felt like an extension of her body, which her sword never did.
She had no compassion for the stonemen that she stabbed. They felt only hate for her, after all. So she tried to shut out all intrusive feelings as time thickened into a mess of blood and clashing swords and wordless cries. She had no idea how anyone beyond her group was faring, and no chance to look.
But eventually a change in the nature of the shouts drew her gaze from the man she had just killed. Kelvha were charging. Several hundred horsemen, hooves thundering and standards flying, were galloping past. She felt the ground shake.
The charge was decisive and made her wonder why it hadn’t happened earlier. The few remaining stonemen cavalry were soon killed or put to flight. The mass of enemy foot-soldiers was still half a mile or so away; but now it halted its advance as the Kelvhans continued their thunderous charge. Then the stonemen turned and began a swift retreat.
“Thank the stars,” said Maeneb, as she leant over to rest while she had the chance, gasping with her hands on her knees. She was aware that she had a cut through her leather jerkin. She felt underneath it: no blood. Hardly any, anyway. “Exciting enough for you?” she asked Durba who stood nearby. The girl looked half-stunned.
“Have we won?” said Durba blankly.
“No,” said Maeneb. “Tactical retreat at best. What’s happening, Parthenal?” With his greater height, he gazed over the heads of the others.
“Kelvha’s still in hot pursuit. Ah, now they’ve had to stop. There’s a line of darkburns, tethered, I think; at least, the Kelvhan horses can’t get past them. It looks as if the Kelvhan charge is halting. Yes, they’re coming back. Well, they’ve given us a break at least. But what took them so long?”
“A break?” said Durba.
“An hour, maybe two if we’re lucky, while the stonemen regroup. Their reinforcements must be arriving soon. Rigal, see to the casualties. There’s Huldarion, thank the stars.” Parthenal strode away to talk to his commander.
Maeneb helped Rigal organise the moving of the injured; thankfully there were not too many, and none were too badly burnt. Despite her own distaste for flesh and skin she could assess them quickly – it was easy for her to tell how much pain each casualty was in – and with quick decision told others what was needed.
The injured dealt with, she turned round to attend to Gordal’s corpse. It still lay smoking on the ground, while Durba was standing motionless nearby, her sword limp in her hand.
“Help me move Gordal,” she said impatiently.
Durba half shook her head. “There’s nothing left to move.”
Maeneb searched for Durba’s feelings and found a blank. Dear stars, the woman’s made of stone, she thought. Witless as a stoneman, without the excuse of a head full of sharpened rocks and unknown drugs.
“Help me move Gordal,” she said again, between clenched teeth. When Durba did not stir, she instead beckoned Landel, who silently aided her in shovelling the smoking remains onto a pair of shields and carrying them away from the main field of battle. The stretchers were needed for the injured, not the dead; and Gordal’s body – if the sad remnant could be called that – would have burnt through a stretcher in any case. She saw Sashel in the distance and wondered if he had yet heard about his twin.
There was little on the shields to say, This once was Gordal. Maeneb stood by the pitiful remains and muttered a prayer of some sort, because something was needed; but she had to improvise the words and she knew they were inadequate. She thought of Yaret murmuring her Oveyn. She could have done with that just now.
Then she charged Landel with guarding Gordal’s body, and returned to the battlefield to hunt spent arrows and collect the stonemen’s chains. They might have a use. When she found Durba, the girl was just standing on the field and staring into space, doing nothing, thinking nothing. But at least she wasn’t happy any more.